Author: PALMQUIST, Erich.
Title: Nagre widh Sidste Kongl. Ambassaden till Tzaren i Muskou giorde Observationer öfwer Ryszland, dess Wäger, Pasz med Fästningar och Gräntzer/ Sammandragne aff Erich Palmquist Anno 1674 (in Swedish).
Description: 2012) With 44 plates in watercolor or sepia (20 of them containing ms. commentary for the illustrations). 28 pp. (and blanks). Large oblong folio (520 x 410 mm). Modern full leather in the old style, gold decorated, with the arms of Charles XI in center, marbled end-papers. In a matching morocco box with mounted arms in metal of Charles XI (1655-1697) in center. N.pl., c. 1674, (reprint Moscow, Lomonosov, 2012). (Added:) PALMQUIST, Erik. Notes on Russia. With 88 color plates and commentaries by E. Löfstrand, U. Birgegard, L. Nordquist, a.o. 352 pp. Oblong quarto. Orig. full leather in the old style, gold decorated, with the arms of Charles XI in center, marbled end-papers (225 x 215 mm). Moscow, Lomonosov, 2012. Ad I: One of only 10 copies, printed here for the first time in full color. A lithographed black-and-white edition appeared in 1898 and was limited to 75 copies. This present facsimile was made in close collaboration with the Academy of Sciences St. Petersburg, the Swedish Academy Stockholm, and Stockholm and Uppsala Universities. The original manuscript is kept in Sweden's State Archive since more than 300 years, intended for internal use only, and virtually unknow to scholars. This album with drawings and watercolors is a unique source for information on 17th century Russia and Russian architecture, civilisation and technology. In the second half of the 17th century a delegation from Sweden headed by Gustaf Oksensherna (Oxenstierna) arrived in Russia. Among its members was the young civil engineer Erik Palmquist (1650-1676), who was ordered by the Swedish government to accompany this special mission to bring back more information about Russia, its roads and transport infrastructure, fortresses their walls and defensive towers, particularly under the aspect of military technology and strategy. Furthermore Palmquist was requested to draw maps of all the large waterways and lakes particularly on the way to Moscow and provide detailed architectural sketches of big cities and their churches, monasteries, castles, fortifications, also sketches of army regiments, barracks and lodgings, cavalry units and their equipment such as details of the weapons, artillery, its construction and efficieny, shells, grenades, rockets and shot ignition sets, technical devices and other facilities. The levels of technology were assessed, such as the depiction of the machinery needed to hoist Grigor'ev's Great Bell of Moscow, approx. 2.2 tons and the means of communications and the postal system. But also pieces of art, the Tsar's throne or a monument to Ivan the Terrible. Since the 11th to the 12th centuries a specific technique of drilling by wooden tubes for brines were used in ancient Russia. Underground water and salt boiling were at high technical level there. Palmquist also describes a salt boiling house at Mshaga river in the Novgorod Oblast. Drawings of it are contained in his book. Ad II: To this huge facsimile album is added a commentary work limited to 500 copies printed. The leading Swedish historian on Russia, Kari Tarkiaynen, refers to Palmquist's "Notes on Russia" as the "crown" of Swedish Rossica. Palmquist's texts are here translated from Old Swedish into contemporary English, Russian and Swedish. Included in this book are all color illustrations but in a much smaller size of the plates.

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